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r «.t Whitman : Poet of 
the Human Whole^ 




William Thur^on Brown 

Principal "Tiie Modem School" 



PRICE 
15 CENTS 



Published by "THE MODERN SCHOOL" 

PORTLAND, OREGON 



-^ / /- / / 






To 

Charles Erskine Scott Wood, 

Poet, Artist, and Man, 

this appreciation of a kindred spirit 

is affectionately inscribed 

by the Author, 



<tS' 



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WALT WHITMAN: POET AND MAN. 

William Thurston Brown. 

Until comparatively recent times, it has been assumed 
by historians and other writers that the great events and 
the great changes which history records have been and 
are the product of a few great personalities or great 
geniuses; that, as some one has said, institutions are the 
prolonged shadows of great men. This is what is called 
''the great man theory." So advanced a writer as 
Carlyle held that theory, perhaps Emerson also. Today, 
I think, no thoughtful students of history or sociology 
or anthropology would entertain that theory for a mo- 
ment. The fuller knowledge which modern research has 
produced makes no room at all for any such idea. Great 
movements, great changes in society, great events in 
liistory, are not at all the product of geniuses, but, on the 
contrary, geniuses or great men Are themselves the 
product of inevitable changes in the economic and social 
organism. The very foundation of sociology as a science 
is the fact that society is an organism, and the chief thing 
that makes society an organism is its fundamentally eco- 
nomic nature, the primary necessity of food, and the 
methods by which that necessity is met. The social organ- 
ism grows, changes, outgrows, becomes conscious of new 
and larger necessities, and the so-called "great man" or 



2 WALT WHITMAN 

''genius" is simply the man who becomes aAvare of this 
new necessity, with whose creation he had absolutely 
nothing whatever to do. 

That history has personalities worthy to be called 
''great," no one doubts or questions — the less so now 
that we understand clearly what these phenomena really 
mean. And now that we know what they do mean, the 
thing which must interest us most deeply is the social or 
economic changes, the social growth, the expansion of the 
social organism, by which alone such men are possible. 
We begin to understand that society itself in its evolution 
is the most fruitful field of study, and to that field we 
are now applying ourselves with results in intelligence 
and in well-defined movements such as all preceding 
history has never once seen. If it is worth while at all to 
study the writings or personalities of so-called great men, 
it is simply because such a study throws light upon the 
nature of the social organism and the social changes 
which have been or are in progress. And this is the chief 
reason why a study of Walt Whitman as a poet and a 
personality of history has value and importance. 

In order that those of us who may have little or no 
knowledge of Whitman's personality and literary product 
may begin this study with some presumption as to the 
man's real place in the unfolding of human life, I want 
to repeat the words of two well-known men respecting 
the value and influence of Whitman's writings. The 
first is a letter written to Whitman by Ralph Waldo 
Emerson in 1885. Let it be borne in mind that the first 



WALT WHITMAN 3 

issue of Whitman's verse occurred in the year 1855, and 
that a fairly complete edition of ''Leaves of Grass," as 
he named his collected verses, was issued in 1872. In 
other words, for nearly a generation some of the most 
vital of Whitman's literary products had been in printed 
form when this letter was written by Emerson. The let- 
ter is dated: "Concord, Mass., July 21, 1885," and is as 

follows : 

"Dear Sir: — I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift 
of 'Leaves of Grass.' I find it the most extraordinary piec? 
of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very 
happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the 
demand I am always making of what seems the sterile and stingy 
Nature, as if too much handiwork of too much lymph in the tem- 
perament were making our western wits fat and mean. I give you 
joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find 
incomparable things, said incomparably well, as they must be. 
I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which 
large perception only can inspire. 

*'I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet 
must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. 
I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; 
but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the 
best merits — namely, of fortifying and encouraging. 

"I did not know, until I last night saw the book advertised 
in a newspaper, that I could trust the name as real and available 
for a post-office. 

''I wish to see my benefactor, and have felt much like striking 
my tasks, and visiting New York to pay you my respects. 

R. W. EMERSON." 

Who was Emerson, and what is the significance of 
this letter? Perhaps it is not too much to say that up to 
date Emerson has had a greater influence upon the think- 



1 WALT WHITMAN 

ing of America than any other man. It does not follow, 
of course, that the opinions of Emerson or his estimates 
of value are to be accepted without question. But it does 
at least create a strong presumption in favor of the idea 
that there is value where he seemed to find value. 

This letter is the frank recognition by Emerson of 
something higher and greater than himself. He had 
already given the world his best, but he calls "Leaves of 
Grass" the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom 
America has yet contributed to the literature of the 
world. He recognizes that it is literature, in all the noble 
meaning of that word. That is to say, it is a valid and 
convincing interpretation of life, a fuller and riper and 
completer interpretation than any preceding American 
writer, at least, has made. He says he finds in it "incom- 
parable things said incomparably well." And that is 
exactly what scores, perhaps hundreds, of the most 
earnest, serious, thoughtful men in all the world have 
found in Whitman. So wonderful does it seem to Emer- 
son that such a piece of writing should have been pro- 
duced by an}^ one, especially an American, that he rubbed 
his eyes to see if he were not dreaming. And I don't 
wonder at it. America has lagged behind almost every 
nation in Christendom in its contributions to anything 
worthy to be called literature. 

There cannot be any doubt as to the impression which 
Wliitman made on Emerson. And Emerson never re- 
tracted what he said in that letter. It may be that he later 
on suffered some change of opinion regarding some of 



WALT WHITMAN 5 

the things which Whitman wrote : he probably did, prob- 
ably felt repelled by them, as many others have felt re- 
pelled. I can hardly conceive it possible for Emerson to 
have accepted Whitman's verses entitled "Children of 
Adam" with approval. But it surely is a significant 
thing that a man of the intellectual and moral caliber of 
Emerson should have written as he did to Whitman; for 
Emerson was, more than anything else, a seeker after the 
highest things in human possibilities. 

I want to deepen in your minds, if I can, the pre- 
sumption that Whitman had and has still a profound moral 
significance for us by citing one more illustration. It is a 
confession of one of the greatest and most democratic of 
modern English critics, John Addington Symonds. The 
following are the closing paragraphs of Mr. Symond's 
book entitled, "A Study of Walt Whitman": 

"After all, the great thing is, if possible, to induce 
people to study Whitman for themselves. I am convinced 
that, especially for young men, his spirit, if intelligently 
understood and sympathized with, must be productive of 
incalculable good. This I venture to emphasize by relat- 
ing what he did for me. I had received the ordinary 
English gentleman's education at Harrow and Oxford. 
Being physically below the average in health and strength, 
my development proceeded more upon the intellectual 
than the athletic side. In a word, I was decidedly aca- 
demical, and in danger of becoming a prig. What was 
more, my constitution in the year 1865 seemed to have 
broken down, and no career in life lay open to me. In 



6 WALT WHITMAN 

the autumn of that year, my friend Frederic Myers read 
me aloud a poem from 'Leaves of Grass.' We were to- 
gether in his rooms at Trinity College, Cambridge; and 
I can well remember the effect of his sonorous voice roll- 
ing out sentence after sentence, sending electric thrills 
through the very marrow of my mind. I immediately 
procured the Boston edition of 1860-61, and began to 
study it attentively. It cannot be denied that much in 
Whitman puzzled and repelled me. But it was the aes- 
thetic, not the moral, sensibility that suffered; for T felt 
at once that his method of treating sexual things (the 
common stumbling block to beginners) was the right one, 
and wished that I had come across 'Children of Adam' 
several years earlier. My academical prejudices, the 
literary instincts trained by two decades of Greek and 
Latin studies, the refinements of culture, and the exclu- 
siveness of aristocratic breeding, revolted against the un- 
couthness, roughness, irregularity, coarseness, of the poet 
and his style. But, in the course of a short time. Whitman 
delivered my soul of* these debilities. 

"As I have said elsewhere in print, he taught me to 
comprehend the harmony between the democratic spirit, 
science, and that larger religion to which the modern 
world is being led by the conception of human brother- 
hood, and by the spirituality inherent in any really scien- 
tific view of the universe. He gave body, concrete vitality, 
to the religious creed which I had already been forming 
for myself upon the study of Goethe, Greek and Roman 
Stoics, Giordano Bruno, and the founders of the evolu- 



WALT WHITMAN 7 

tionary doctrine. He inspired me with faith, and made 
me feel that optimism was not unreasonable. This gave 
me great cheer in those evil years of enforced idleness 
and intellectual torpor which my ill-health imposed upon 
me. Moreover, he helped to free me from many conceits 
and pettinesses to which academical culture is liable. He 
opened my eyes to the beauty, goodness and greatness 
which may be found in all worthy human beings, the 
humblest and the highest. He made me respect personality 
more than attainments or position in the world. Through 
him, I stripped my soul of social prejudices. Through him, 
I have been able to fraternise in comradeship with men 
of all classes and several races, irrespective of their caste, 
creed, occupation, and special training. To him I owe 
some of the best friends I now claim — sons of the soil, 
hard workers, natural and nonchalant, 'powerful unedu- 
cated persons.' 

''Only those who have been condemned by imperfect 
health to take a back seat in life so far as physical enjoy- 
ments are concerned, and who have also chosen the ca- 
reer of literature, can understand what is meant by the 
deliverance from foibles besetting invalids and pedants 
for which I have to thank Walt Whitman. 

"What he has done for me, I feel he will do for 
others — for each and all of those who take counsel of 
him. and seek from him a solution of difficulties differing 
in kind according to the temper of the individual — if only 
they approach him in the right spirit of confidence and 
open-mindedness. ' ' 



WALT WHITMAN 



Do not you agree with me that in this confession of 
Mr. Symonds — so simple, sincere and genuine — we have 
a real and convincing testimony to the virtue of Walt 
Whitman? Is it not a remarkable thing that is here re- 
corded : that the simple, straightforward words of a man 
who all his life lived as a working man, of one who never 
received a college degree, never was inside of a college as 
a student, never received anything of the training of the 
schools such as is commonly considered indispensable for 
a literary career — that the words of such a man should 
bear to this child of ancient British aristocracy the 
message and uplift of a moral emancipation, completely 
transforming his life, making the world new to him. in- 
vesting existence for him with such purpose as otherwise 
he could never have known? Of course, it does not 
follow that what Whitman did for Symonds he can also 
do for any one else. It does not follow that his writings 
can have for men of all classes the effect they had for a 
man like Symonds. But I am convinced that for many 
men of every class in society a knowledge of the v^erses 
of Whitman and a sympathetic understanding of his per- 
sonality has all the exhilaration and stimulus, in a moral 
way, that a cold bath has in a physical way. And from 
personal experience I do not hesitate to say that I know of 
no other writer, ancient or modern, of whose verse it is 
more fitting to say: "Come on in— the water's fine." 

In the case of Whitman, the facts of his personal 
biography are altogether the least important things to 
know. A knowledge of them adds absolutely nothing to 



WALT WHITMAN 9 

anything he has written. Nothing about his birth or 
ancestry accounts for him or his writings in any sense 
whatever. Well does he say of his verses: 
''These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands — 

they are not original with me ; 
If they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing. 

or next to nothing; 
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is, and the 

water is; 
This is the common air that bathes the globe." 

And of no book I have ever read does it seem to me 
so true to say, as Whitman says of his literary product : 
''This is no bookj 

Who touches this, touches a man." 
The most interesting thing to know about him is the fact 
that his life was lived almost wholly out of doors, in the 
country in closest contact with nature in her many 
moods, in the city in closest touch with the great body of 
workers upon whom the social structure is reared, on 
the battle-fields of the Civil War and in its hospitals as 
a nurse, the most efficient, I suppose, that whole period 
knew. All his life he made himself familiar with natural 
scenery, tramping over a considerable part of the United 
States and Canada, and everywhere making himself at 
home. No other man of his time knew people as famil- 
iarly as he did — no other poet in the world's history has 
approached him in the intimate interpretation of the 
great varied multitude of ordinary men and women. His 
life from the age of 28 to 35, when he wrote his "Leaves 



10 WALT WHITMAN 

of Grass," was spent as a sort of hobo, earning his living 
always, but moving from place to place and becoming 
acquainted with all sorts of men and women as comrade 
and fellow. That, in a large measure, was his preparation 
for at least the descriptive work which he did. And dur- 
ing those years and all the time he was writing his poems 
he had perfect bodily health. He was a man about six 
feet tall and well proportioned. And though his clothing 
was always plain and often worn, it was always scrupu- 
lously clean. Cleanness of body and mind were a vital 
part of his religion. 

Inasmuch as Whitman has given a description of his 
motive in writing his poems, I cannot do better than 
quote his own words. "When I commenced, years ago," 
he says in the preface to the edition of 1872, "elaborating 
the plan of my poems, and continued turning over that 
plan, and shifting it in my mind through many years 
(from the age of 28 to 35), experimenting much, writing 
and abandoning much, one deep purpose underlay all 
others, and has underlain them and their execution ever 
since — and that has been the religious purpose." It 
should not be supposed, however, that Whitman means 
by this term "religious" what is commonly meant by it. 
Quite otherwise. He explains what he means by it. "Not 
of course to exhibit itself in the old ways," he says, "as 
in the writing of hymns or psalms with an eye to the 
church pew or to express conventional pietism or the sick- 
ly yearnings of devotees, but in new ways, and aiming at 
the widest sub-bases and inclusions of humanity, and tally- 



WALT WHITMAN H 

ing the fresh air of sea and land. I will see (said I to my- 
self) whether there is not for my purposes as poet a reli- 
gion, and a sound religious germinancy, in the average hu- 
man race, and in the common fiber and native yearnings 
and elements, deeper and larger, and affording more prof- 
itable returns than all mere sects and churches— as bound- 
less and joyous and vital as Nature itself— a germinancy 
that has too long been unencouraged, unsung, almost un- 
known. With science the old theology of the East, long 
in its dotage, begins evidently to die and disappear. But 
(to my mind) science— and maybe such will prove its 
principal service— as evidently prepares the way for one 
indescribably grander— Time's young but perfect off- 
spring—the New Theology— heir of the West— lusty and 
loving, and wondrous beautiful. The time has certainly 
come to begin to discharge the idea of religion from mere 
ecclesiasticism, and from Sundays and churches and 
church-going, and assign it to that general position, 
chiefest, most indispensable, most exhilarating, to which 
the others are to be adjusted, inside of all human charac- 
ter and education and affairs. The people, especially the 
young men and women of America, must begin to learn 
that religion (like poetry) is something far different from 
what they supposed. It is, indeed, too important to the 
power and perpetuity of the New World to be consigned 
any longer to churches old or new. Catholic or Protestant, 
Saint this or Saint that. It must be consigned henceforth 
to Democracy en masse, and to literature. It must enter 
into the poems of the nation. It must make the nation." 



12 WALT WHITMAN 

Whatever we may think of Whitman's use of some of 
these old terms or phrases, when we consider the fact that 
he wrote his verses as far back as 1855 and this introduc- 
tion before 1872, we cannot help seeing what a tremendous 
advance his thought meant over that of any of his Ameri- 
can contemporaries. It was nothing less than a revolu- 
tionary idea that possessed him, as revolutionary now as 
it was then, regardless of his choice of words. For what 
he proposed to do was to include everything within the 
sphere of that which is to be held supremely sacred. That 
is exactly what he did. He refused to recognize any dual- 
ism at all, although the church of that time was univer- 
sally duaJistic in its conceptions. Whitman's purpose was 
the very purpose which makes a man either a true poet 
or a true philosopher. It Avas a purpose absolutely akin 
to that which has animated every great philosopher : that 
of unifying all knowledge and all life. In this respect. 
Whitman stands alone, so far as I know, among the poets 
_of all the ages. 

But perhaps the question will occur to some one's 
mind, Was Whitman a poet at all? Is this loosely strung 
mass of writing poetry? Many have answered: No. He 
is not a poet. This writing, violating all the rules of 
rhythm, all the standards of accustomed style, is not 
poetry. And one immediately calls to mind the works of 
those poets of the past, ancient and modern, whom the 
world calls great; such names as Homer, Virgil, Dante. 
Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spenser, Tennyson, Brown- 
ing, Goethe, and the rest. When you compare the work 



WALT WHITMAN 13 

of Whitman with the work of these men. you are bound 
to see a most radical difference. If we are limited for our 
definition of poet by the standards of style which these 
accepted poets of the past used, then Whitman is not a 
poet and Avhat he has written is not poetry. True, 
rhymes are not poetry, rhyme has no essential relation to 
poetry. The masterpieces of poetry are not written in 
rhyme — they are composed in some sort of blank verse. 
They have meter, rhythm, but they do not have rhyme. 
This is true of Homer, Virgil, Dante, IMilton, Shakespeare 
and Browning especially. But Whitman does -not write 
in blank verse, even. He has discarded every method 
Avhich any former poet observed. And yet, there are 
lines in some of Whitman's writings which have a rhythm 
and a power which are not surpassed in those of any other 
who has ever written. 

Where among all the writings of American poets can 
you match in epic expression these lines addressed to the 
future of this New World : 
"Sail — sail thy best, ship of Democracy! 
Of value in thy freight — 'tis not the Present only. 
The Past is also stored in thee ! 
Thou boldest not the venture of thyself alone — not of thy 

western continent alone; 
Earth's resume entire floats on thy keel, ship — is 

steadied by thy spars; 
With thee Time voyages in trust — the antecedent nations 

sink or swim with thee ; 



14 WALT WHITMAN 

AVith all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, 
wars, thou bear'st the other continents; 

Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination port tri- 
umphant : 

— Steer, steer with good strong hand and wary eye, O 
helmsman — thou carriest great companions, 

Venerable, priestly Asia sails this day with thee. 

And royal, feudal Europe sails Avith thee. 

Beautiful world of new, superber Birth, that rises to my 

eyes, 
Like a limitless golden cloud, filling the western sky — 
The Present holds thee not — for such vast growth as thine 

— for such unparalleled flights as thine. 
The Future only holds thee, and can hold thee.'' 

No other American, whether poet or statesman, has 
ever had anything approaching the conceptions expressed 
by Whitman — the conceptions of Democracy's destiny. 

I could not name another writer who has so combined 
melody of Avords Avith Avonder of thought as Whitman in 
"The Mystic Trumpeter": 

"BloAA^, trumpeter, free and clear — I folloAV thee. 
While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene. 
The fretting Avorld, the streets, the noisy hours of day, 

withdraAA^ ; 
A holy calm descends, like dew, upon me, 
I Avalk, in cool refreshing night, the Avalks of Paradise, 
I scent the grass, the moist air, and the roses; 



WALT WHITMAN 1 5 

Th}^ song expends my numb'd, imbonded spirit — thou 

freest, launchest me, 
Floating and basking upon Heaven's lake. 

''Blow again, trumpeter! and for thy theme, 

Take now the enclosing theme of all — the sustenance and 

the pang; 
The heart of man and woman all for love ; 
No other theme but love — knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing 

love. 
0, how the immortal phantoms crowd around me! 
I see the vast alembic ever working—! see and know the 

flames that heat the world ; 
The glow, the blush, the beating hearts of lovers. 
So blissful happy some — and some so silent, dark and 

nigh to death ; 
Love, that is all the earth to lovers — -Love, that mocks 

time and space. 
Love, that is day and night — Love, that is sun, moon and 

stars ; 
Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume ; 
No other words, but words of love — no other thought but 

Love. 

"0 trumpeter! methinks I am myself the instrument thou 

playest ! 
Thou melt'st my heart, my brain— thou movest, drawest. 

changest them at will, 
And now thy sullen notes send darkness through me; 



16 WALT WHITMAN 

Thou takest away all cheering light — all hope : 

I see the enslaved, the overthrown, the hurt, the oppressed 

of the whole earth, 
I feel the measureless shame and humiliation of my race- 
it becomes all mine; 

''Now, trumpeter, for thy close, 

Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet ; 

Sing to my soul — renew its languishing faith and hope; 

Rouse up my slow belief — give me some vision of the 

future ; 
Give me, for once, its prophecy and joy. 

"O glad, exulting, culminating song! 

A vigor more than earth's is in thy notes! 

Marches of victory — man disenthralled — the conqueror 

at last! 
A reborn race appears — a perfect world, all joy! 
Women and men. in wisdom, innocence and health — all 

joy! 
War, sorrow, suffering gone — the rank earth purged — 

nothing left but joy. 
Joy! Joy! in freedom, worship, love ! Joy in the ecstasy 

of life ! 
Enough to merely be ! Enough to breathe ! 
Joy! Joy! all over Joy!" 

The qualities which give immortality to any poems 
are not in the form, but in the essence. And if we trv 



WALT WHITMAN 17 

to find an explanation of Whitman's departure from all 
accepted standards in his style of writing, we shall find 
it when we discover the purpose which inspired him. 
Every poet must choose the medium which best serves 
his purpose. Only on that ground is there any explanation 
of .variety in poetical forms. Epic poetry differs from 
lyric, dramatic from didactic, and so on. It is the 
purpose of the poet which dictates the form in which he 
will write. Think, then, of the difference — as wide as the 
world — which lies between the motive or purpose out of 
which the poems of other men have come and the motive 
or purpose which created the verse of Whitman. What, 
for example, were Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Shakes- 
peare and others trying to express? In almost every case 
these men w^ere attempting to voice either the accepted 
religious or theological ideas of their time, or, as in the 
case of Shakespeare, to portray the passions and ambitions, 
as well as the superstitions, of that portion of society that 
lived on the l)acks of the toiling multitude. Not one of 
those poets who have been called great — except possibly 
Browning — has ever attempted to sing the songs of the 
human whole, just as no movement up till our own time — 
religious or political — has dreamed of including all. 
What is Paradise Lost? It is an epic based on the the- 
ology of the 16th century, a theology which has been un- 
dermined and rendered baseless by the science of today. 
The same is true of Dante's great poem. What are the 
poems of Homer and Virgil? They are epics of an age of 
war. The}^ embody the myths of their time, and they have 



18 WALT WHITMAN 

not a word or a syllable in honor of the man who does the 
fundamental work of the world — for that man was a 
slave. What are Shakespeare's dramas? Wonderful in 
their portrayal of human passion of every sort, among 
those who count in the world's life, they undoubtedly are. 
But you might read every word he ever wrote without 
finding one to commemmorate the hopes or desires or 
destiny of the innumerable class of workers on whose 
backs the society of that day and the society of this and 
all days, thus far, is builded. So far as I know, Whitman 
is the only poet who has sung the songs of the whole of 
humanity, the first poet who could say: 
''I do not ask who you are — -that is not so important 

for me : 
You can do nothing, and be nothing, but what I Avill in- 
fold you." 
"Through me many long dumb voices; 
Voices of the interminable generations of slaves; 
Voices of prostitutes and deformed persons; 
Voices of the diseased and despairing, and of thieves and 

dwarfs ; 
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion. 
And of the threads that connect the stars — and of wombs 

and of the father-stuff. 
And of the rights of them the others are down upon." 
"I speak the pass- word primeval — I give the sign of 

democracy ; 
I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counter- 
part of on the same terms." 



WALT WHITMAN 19 

Whitman brings tlie thinking world face to face with 
the question, May there not be now at our very doors the 
dawn of a new and incomparably nobler era, an era 
fraught with vaster consequences than that which gives 
us our present calendar? Indeed, the whole message of 
Whitman is exactly the announcement and the moral 
challenge of such an era now impending, now throwing 
its first red light up the eastern sky. It should not seem 
strange that such a phenomenon as Whitman — a man 
who cannot be classified according to any previous stand- 
ard — should appear, for it is only history repeating itself. 
There never yet has been any big change in our human 
world which poets have not foreseen long before any 
other class of men did. That is what makes a man a 
poet. A poet is not a versifier, a lackey — like Alfred 
Austin, whom Queen Victoria made laureate on the death 
of Tennyson, in spite of the fact that in William Morris 
all the deepest feeling and clearest vision of England 
were finding expression. The poet is a seer. He is the 
man who sees — sees what is coming through the mist of 
years, senses the tidal pulse of a new epoch and becomes 
its herald and singer. That Whitman amply fits this 
definition is seen in the fact that, though Darwin did not 
publish his epoch-making discovery in the field of evolu- 
tionary science, effecting a complete revolution in all our 
knowledge, until 1859, Whitman over and over portrays 
the evolutionary process in his "Leaves of Grass' in 1855. 

These older poetical forms with which we are familiar 
were suited to their time and purpose, just as the various 



20 WALT WHITMAN 

architectural forms have been. But they are not suited 
at all to a radically different era, on whose threshold we 
now unconsciously are standing. We can easily under- 
stand that forms of law and government which were 
perfectly appropriate to an era which accepted as final 
the divine right of kings must be obsolete in an age which 
has abolished kings. We can understand that those reli- 
gious ideas which grew up in an age of almost universal 
ignorance and superstition must lose their value in an 
age of widespread enlightenment. If now there should 
come in human society another and vaster revolution — a 
revolution which will leave no man the master of another, 
no man in possession of power over another's destiny, 
every man and woman a partner in cooperative service, 
is it not evident that such a new order of society would 
render many things obsolete and useless which we have 
grown accustomed to regard as fixed and settled? That 
a new age should demand and create a new literary form 
for the expression of its essential meaning is simply 
inevitable. And that is the significance of Whitman as a 
poet. He is not the poet of the old, he is the poet of the 
new. If his verse sounds to many of us strange, uncouth 
foolish, forbidding, repellent, may it not be because our 
minds have become warped out of their natural shape by 
moral or immoral adjustment to an outgrown and deca- 
dent civilization? 

I suppose the most repellent thing in all the writings 
of Whitman, that which more than all else staggers men 
and women, is his treatment of things belonging to sex. 



WALT WHITMAN 21 

In the face of Whitman's free and frank glorification of 
the sexual organs and even the sexual act, many people 
draw back and refuse to go any further. But the people 
who shrink from such frank acceptance of sex, even from 
glorification of sex functions, are not only mistaken, but 
are positively immoral and unclean, and of all people on 
this earth are most in need of the moral bath which the 
writings of Whitman afford. 

Think for a moment what is the status of sex and 
things sexual in our present civilization, in our alleged 
moral and religious training. Let us see if our present 
attitude towards sexuality is so perfect and satisfactory, 
tliat any change would be a misfortune. And let us see, 
too, in what direction change must surely take place in 
this matter. There is nothing about which the mass of 
humanity are taught less, either at home or at school, than 
about sex. There is nothing in the whole constitution of 
man and woman concerning which there is such wide- 
spread and dense ignorance as about altogether the most 
important function human beings possess, the one func- 
tion which surpasses all others together in importance. 
We could scarcely be more successful in keeping our chil- 
dren totally ignorant of the meaning or function of sex, 
if we had deliberately planned to promote such ignorance. 
Am I not right when I say that our almost universal 
treatment of sex and sex relations is such as to create the 
feeling in most minds that there is something essentially 
low and shameful indissolubly connected with that part 
of our physical being? The lowest word we can apply to 
a woman is the word ^'prostitute." Though why we 



22 WALT WHITMAN 

should limit that word to one class of women, and not 
apply it to large quantities of respectable women and 
multitudes of respectable men, is quite beyond any ra- 
tional explanation. Such a situation could obtain only 
in a civilization that is rotten to the core, a civilization 
that smells to heaven, a civilization that no alleged re- 
vivals of religion, though converts were numbered by 
the millions instead of the hundreds, can ever make 
decent or clean. "We have a double standard of morals, 
so that a woman, who from whatever stress of hardship 
or extremity of want violates a certain convention, is 
branded forever and becomes an outcast from society, 
while a man who is guilty of the same thing habitually, 
and the fact known far and wide, retains his place in 
society undisturbed. And yet, where there is one woman 
who is prostituting her sex, there are scores and hundreds 
of men who are constantly and cheerfully and fervently 
prostituting their minds, their brains, their whole life in 
ways far more disastrous. 

And we shall have to lay the blame for no small part 
of this terrible sex immorality, which curses the world, 
at the door of the Christian Church. This Christian 
Church has been very fond of quoting the Avords of its 
alleged founder: ''Ye have the poor always with you." 
And certainly the membership of the church have done 
their best to see to it that we shall have quantities of poor 
forever with us. But they have just as cheerfully and 
determinedly declared that we must also have prostitution 
with us. It probably is not well understood by many 
people, because most people do not think, will not think, 



WALT WHITMAN 23 

will suffer any penalty rather than think — but the 
church and the brothel are both and equally parasitic 
growths on society, the one as inexcusable and unnec- 
essary as the other, and they will both disappear together. 

Upon no subject has the teaching of the church been 
more pernicious than on the subject of sex. Orthodox 
Christianity has no more cherished doctrine than that of 
the Immaculate Conception. The inevitable corollary of 
that doctrine is that all natural conception, all conception 
produced in the normal way, is essentially impure and 
low. That idea even occurs in Mrs. Eddy's teaching. It 
was inevitable that the Roman Church should teach, as 
it now teaches, that celibacy, or abstinence from all sexual 
expression, is the highest condition of human life. In 
other words, that very process without which no man or 
woman ever came into the world or ever can come is a 
more or less immoral, base, animal process. And the 
deliberate suppression and disuse of one of the highest 
functions of the human body is a religious duty, a religious 
virtue! The whole influence of the Christian Church in 
this matter has been an immoral and degrading influence 
and will sometime be seen so to have been. The domina- 
tion of the Christian Church over the world will sometime 
be looked back upon as one long nightmare, one black 
shadow, one fearful violation of human life. 

Society thus far has treated this whole matter of sex 
in a negative way, never in a positive, constructive way. 
It cannot be said that we have accomplished anything in 
this direction to be proud of. Largely as a result of the 
widespread ignorance of the meaning of sex which we 



24 WALT WHITMAN 

foster in our children, leaving the whole subject out of 
the public school system and letting our boys and girls 
pick up their knowledge of these things out of the gutter, 
out of obscene stories and vicious habits, we have reached 
the proud distinction — absolutely unknown among sav- 
ages — of making venereal diseases the most common and 
widespread of all diseases known to man. 80 much has 
this fact been impressed on ph.ysiciaus, that some of them 
are inclined to call our civilization a "syphilisation." 
And they are not far out of the way. 

The remedy for what we call social or sexual vice does 
not lie in the direction of suppression or ignorance or 
mystery or any other sort of superstition. It lies exactly 
in the direction to which Whitman points: in the direc- 
tion of fullest knowledge for every child that comes into 
the world not only of its own sexual significance, but 
equally of that of the opposite sex ; in the direction of 
including this whole matter of sex within the area of the 
things which we hold sacred, giving it the positive sanc- 
tion of all that belongs to beauty, to happiness, to good. 
This is not to put a premium on immodesty or to sanction 
promiscuity — quite otherwise. But, whether we like it 
or not, we may as well make up our minds that the only 
direction in which the solution of any problem lies, I 
care not what, is the direction of freedom and knowledge. 
Suppression is evasion, always has been, always will be. 
Life is expression. Virtue is expression. No man or 
woman has any more virtue than he or she has positive 
conviction and generous, joyous expression. 

The poetry of Whitman is the denial of dualism. It 



WALT WHITMAN 25 

is the affirmation of monism, of one substance, of all 
things as good. There is no ''base" or "low" in this 
nature of ours, and it is only mistaken and degrading 
human laws that create such ideas in the minds of people. 
The world has for ages been cursed by the fals^ and im- 
moral distinction of "sacred" and "secular" — one of the 
sole and legitimate products of the so-called religious in- 
stitution, one of the things which the Christian Church 
alone has given the world — and we are everywhere suffer- 
ing beyond all words from that false and immoral dis- 
tinction. But it is no better to separate the human body 
into sacred and secular, than it is to separate one's social 
or moral life that way. Unless every bit of the body is 
sacred, none of it is, and none of it can be made so or 
considered so. If any part of the body is considered by 
any one profane or low or shameful, you will find that 
such a person will find none of the body really sacred. 
And this is the message of Whitman : Sex is sacred, is 
divine, is fundamental, is the holiest thing this world con- 
tains, is the fountain of all that means anything, of all 
value, of all poetry, of all truth, of all beauty, of all love, 
of all life. And only as you so regard it can you ever enter 
into 3^our full inheritance as men and women. More than 
that, there can be no real morality which does not freely 
and joyously recognize the sacredness of sex, which does 
not banish this immoral and degrading sense of shame in 
the reverent, whole-souled acceptance of sex and all that 
pertains to it as fundamental to life and beauty and ful- 
filment. Sings Whitman : 



26 WALT WHITMAN 

''Sex contains all, 

Bodies, Souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, re- 
sults, promulgations, 
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the 

seminal milk; 
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, 
All the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth, 
All the governments, judges, gods, followed persons of 

the earth, 
These are all contained in sex, as parts of itself, and justi- 
fication of itself." 
"Without shame the man I like knows and avows the 

deliciousness of his sex. 
Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers." 
No thoughtful person will question the value of the 
influence of the Puritan in our race-life and history, 
but it is easy to exaggerate that influence, to extend it 
beyond the limits to which it properly belongs. And that 
is exactly what has been done. Beginning as a mighty 
protest against despotism, against injustice, and rein- 
forced by theological conceptions which were colossal 
for their time, the Puritan movement became the resist- 
less conqueror of a vicious and corrupt despotism both 
in church and state — even if it did not go to the root of 
the matter — and if it had done no more than give the 
world a Cromwell, it would defy any attempt at belittle- 
ment. But when it transcended its proper limits and 
threw a pall of gloom over one whole side of human life, 
making pleasure a sin and joy an evil thing and dividing 
the dominion of the body between a God and a Devil, 



WALT WHITMAN 27 

producing the most absurd moral monstrosity: so that it 
is justlj" said that the Puritans were opposed to bear- 
baiting, not through any feeling of pity for the bears, 
but because men might get some pleasure out of it; when 
that issue was reached, Puritanism became an immoral 
and irreligious thing, and the Avorld has not even yet 
escaped from its baneful shadow. And there is no escape 
from it, or from the sorrowful results which it 
has produced, except in the whole-hearted acceptance of 
joy, pleasure, happiness, expression, the sacredness of 
the whole body — nay, the acceptance of the body as itself 
containing and implying all the sacredness that ever has 
been claimed for what is called the soul. If Whitman had 
done nothing else than sing the sacredness of the body 
and declare that the body is just as divine, jusi: as clean, 
just as holy, just as sacred as ever the soul has been 
thought to be, he would have earned the never-dying 
gratitude of all the unborn myriads of human beings that 
are to come into this human world. 
"I have said that the soul is not more than the body, 
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul ; 
And nothing, but God, is greater to one than one's self is, 
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy, walks 
to his funeral, drest in his shroud.'' 
The infinite and unspeakable pity and pathos of our 
world as it is now organized, as life is now lived, or as 
existence now goes on, lies in the fact that such an in- 
numerable multitude of men and women are doing exactly 
what Whitman here describes: they 

''walk to their own funeral, drest in a shroud." 



28 WALT WHITMAN 

Be it remembered, too, that if Whitman all through his 
poems uses the first person, he is, after all, the most im- 
personal of all poets. He is the poet of affirmation, and 
the ''I" that speaks, that affirms, that enfolds the whole 
universe, that looks into the face of Nature and pro- 
nounces it good — yes, the actual man. Whitman, who in 
his own clean, natural, healthy, wholesome life hailed 
every man and woman as comrade and equal, and who 
lived out the beauty of his poems as naturally as a flower 
blooms — that ''I," that personality, is nothing more than 
all of us, every last man and woman of us, finding voice, 
uttering our challenge in the face of warping and hinder- 
ing and oppressive laws and institutions, claiming our 
sacred heritage, hungering and thirsting for the bread 
and water of life, seeking and demanding the uttermost 
of right and fulfilment. More than that, infinitely more 
than that, deeper, higher, vaster — the voice of Whitman 
is the voice of all Nature, of the whole universe, proclaim- 
ing laws, principles, truths, which infinitely transcend 
all these little limiting and enslaving statutes and enact- 
ments which measure the degree of our ignorance and 
our slavery — laws, principles, truths, before whose very 
names, entering bodily into human consciousness, these 
blasting, blighting institutions of an insane society shrink 
and wither and fade like mists before the sun. 
"I heard you whispering there, stars of heaven; 
O suns! grass of graves! perpetual transfers and 

promotions ! 
If you do not say anything, how can I say anything?" 
The time is coming, as surely as the earth turns on its 



WALT WHITMAN 29 

axis, when no one in all the world will look upon chains 
or shackles or negations or prohibitions of any sort what- 
ever as having virtue, when we shall know that all things 
are good, and so accepting them shall find them good. 
Acceptance — that is one of the central words of the vaster 
and diviner unity which Whitman sings. There is no 
more justification in feeling a sense of shame regarding 
the sexual nature than there is respecting the beauty and 
glory of a day in June, a rose bush, a leaf, a sunset, a 
poem, a symphony, or any other of the things which we 
are accustomed to associate with sublimity, with worship, 
with joy. Find me a man or woman who never has 
learned or known the first syllable of the mystery and 
wonder of love, who never at the thought of another 
human being has heard ''the singing of dried-up springs, 
felt the sap rising in dead boughs, the renewal of life's 
creative forces;" never found "strength as well as intoxi- 
cation" in that thought, "nourishment as well as a 
feast," — and I will show you a man or woman for whom 
Whitman's divinest words will have no meaning, a person 
who cannot read with any appreciation his exulting paeans 
of joy in the creative powers and functions of the human 
body. But find me a man or woman *whose whole being 
has been transfigured by a human love, who has found 
that other being who "is empowered by love to the 
miracle of redeeming our soul — as itself by ours is re- 
deemed — from the sense of being a stranger on the 
earth," that other person in union with whom alone is 
life and joy and all ennobling service, and I will show 
you a man or woman who will find not a syllable or sen- 



30 WALT WHITMAN 

tence in Whitman's words that is not as clean and pure 
as the dew-drop on a rose, as the air after a shower, as 
the health}^ body of a new-born babe. 

I do not wonder at all that Mr. Symonds, whom I 
have already quoted, should say of Whitman and his 
epoch-making utterance : 

''Whether this cosmic enthusiasm, which has been 
expressed by Whitman with a passion of self-dedication, 
a particularity of knowledge, and a sublimity of imagina- 
tion unapproached b^^ an}^ poet-prophet since the death 
of Bruno, i^ destined to reinforce the soul of man with 
faith and inaugurate a new religion, I dare not even 
pause to question. We are told that it is not calculated 
to inspire the ignorant with rapture, to console the indi- 
gent and suffering by suggestions of some mitigation of 
their lot. 

"Still, I may point out that it is the only type of 
faith which agrees with the conclusions and determina- 
tions of science. To bear the yoke of universal law is the 
plain destiny of human beings. If we could learn to bear 
that yoke with gladness, to thrill with vibrant fibers to 
the pulses of the infinite machine we constitute — (for 
if it were possible that the least of us should be eliminated, 
annihilated, the whole machine would stop and crumble 
into chaos) — if, I say, we could feel pride and joy in our 
participation of the cosmic life, then we might stand 
where Whitman stood with 

'feet tenoned and mortised in granite.' 
I do not think it is a religion only for the rich, the power- 
ful, the wise, the healthy. For my own part, I may con- 



WALT WHITMAN 31 

fess that it shone upon me when my life was broken, 
when I was weak, sickly, poor, and of no account; and 
I have ever lived thenceforward in the light and warmth 
of it. In bounden duty towards Whitman, I make this 
personal statement: for had it not been for the contact 
of his fervent spirit with my own, the pyre ready to be 
lighted, the combustible materials of modern thought 
awaiting the touch of the fire-bringer, might never have 
leaped up into the flame of life-long faith and consola- 
tion. During my darkest hours, it comforted me with the 
conviction that I too played my part in the illimitable 
symphony of cosmic life. When I repined, sorrowed, suf- 
fered, it touched me with gentle hand of sympathy and 
understanding, sustained me with the strong arm of as- 
surance that in the end I could not go amiss (for I was a 
part, an integrating part, of the great whole) ; and when 
strength revived in me, it stirred a healthy pride and 
courage to effectuate myself, to bear the slings and arrows 
of outrageous fortune. For this reason, in duty to my 
master Whitman, and in the hope that my experience 
may encourage others to seek the same source of inspira- 
tion, I have exceeded the bounds of an analytical essay 
by pouring forth my personal confession." 

I do not wonder that this book by John Addington 
Symonds, written simply as a piece of literary criticism, 
should spontaneously blossom out into this personal con- 
fession of moral renewal, of unspeakable moral inspira- 
tion and enrichment. It is not at all necessary that his 
confession should be ours or any one's else. It is not to 
be thought either that his interpretation of Whitman is 



32 WALT WHITMAN 

a final or even an adequate one. It isn't. It is limited 
and narrowed by the very limitations of his own caste, 
his own training. It is enough to know that Whitman's 
great inclusive cosmic sj^mphony released the life of even 
such a man from many of his trammels and made the 
world new to him. The greatness of Whitman is unlike 
that of any other poet I can think of. It isn't the great- 
ness of a single personality. It isn't the greatness of 
mystery, or vast knowledge, or finished mastery of style 
or anything of the kind. All the greatness Whitman has, 
either in his verses or in himself, is no other than the 
inherent greatness of the common man, of the common 
substance of human life. Unless you find yourself in 
Whitman, you do not find him at all. He cannot exist 
for you or for any one, except as fulfilment, as the per- 
suasive voice of your own deepest need, your own highest 
longing. His spirit is the spirit of the universal. No 
narrowing sect can be built on the foundation of his vision 
and utterance. All sects must vanish in the vaster unity 
of his all-inclusive conceptions. His verse may not serve 
as the propaganda of that revolutionary process by which 
mankind will break the shell of an outgrown and hamper- 
ing social and economic system, but no emancipation of 
the human race or any part of it is possible of which the 
song of Whitman is not the natural and inevitable music. 
If he does not throw the fullest light upon the path which 
our feet must tread to the day of freedom, he lights up 
the goal of our journey with a radiance no other poet 
has ever shed upon it and quickens the pace and lightens 
the heart on our travel toward it. 



Published Lectures by William Thurston Brown : 

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Is Humanity Hungering for Oodf The Answer of His- 
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LIBRPRY 




[W ANNOUNCE natural persons to arise; 
I I announce justice triumphant; 
I I announce uncompromising liberty and equality; 
^ I announce the justification of candor, and the 

justification of pride. 
I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, 

spiritual, bold; 
I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet 

its translation; 
J announce myrittds of youths, beautiful, gigantic, 

s^eet-blooded; 
I annoiftice a race of splendid' and savage old men. 

—WALT WHITMAN. 



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